'What in the name of Jesus H. Christ are you animals
doing in my head?'

When Sgt. Hartman, in skivvies and a big, incongruous
ranger hat, confronts the murderous and suicidal Private Pyle and the
terror-stricken Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket, Hartman is demanding
to know what "you animals are doing in my head," he's of course using
the military jargon 'head' for bathroom. Yet this use of the word allows for the far funnier, scarier, and more
literal meaning to come into play.

I believe Kubrick's work is primarily concerned with
the havoc, comedy, terror, and chaos unleashed by the animals in human
heads. While humanity has landed on
the moon, invented complex technologies to organize itself, and achieved an intelligent
and sociable co-existence, the human animal is still a creature of tense
dualities, which I argue are destined to pervert our own ambitions and
accomplishments. Many writers have
commented on the depiction of the human personality as fatally flawed in
Kubrick's films: the mad General Ripper in Dr Strangelove who exploits the flaws in a 'fail-safe' nuclear deterrent
system to effect mass-destruction; the computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey
whose own instinct for self preservation has murderous consequences; and the Ludovico system of control that turns Alex into a
'clockwork orange'.

In these films, Kubrick critiques the notion of the
perfect system. In fact it can be argued that in all of his films Kubrick shows
us how perfect systems can collapse because of human weaknesses. In a wider
sense though, I argue that social covenants such as marriage vows, and
contracts between the individual and society can be subverted from within by
humanity's animal instincts for sex, violence and selfishness. Kubrick brilliantly illustrates these themes in
his films. But, underlying the
rigor of all his scenarios there is the anarchic, adolescent urge to lampoon
social niceties which surfaces in his humor, especially of the ÔtoiletÕ
variety. In all the settings of his
films--spacecraft, war-rooms, palaces, bedrooms, prisons--one room always plays
a prominent role, the bathroom. This is the room in which the human pretense of
civilization falls away and the one place in which out animal instincts are
revealed, because as Erving Goffman said. it is the one 'backstage area' where
we take off our social masks and where truth is spoken.

bathrooms are perhaps the main shielding places in
Anglo-American society because in many households these are the only rooms in
which the solitary person can properly lock himself. And it may be only under
these guaranteed conditions that some individuals will feel safe in manifesting
certain situationally improper involvements.

Goffman 1963, 40

Lolita, was the first Kubrick film to make significant use of bathrooms. The
film's protagonist, HumbertHumbert,
is seen in the bathroom, door locked, writing in his secret diary. Just outside the door, his unloved wife,
Charlotte, is knocking and calling to him, "Hum, what is it that you do in there?" What Humbert is doing is writing the unspeakable truth - that he
only married Charlotte to gain access to her teenaged daughter, Lolita, the
object of his obsessive sexual desire. As with many of Kubrick's male protagonists, the power of Humbert's obsession blinds him to the fact that others see
what he is trying to keep hidden. As he writes his secret diary in the locked bathroom, he is the model of
propriety--in his bathrobe, perched on the bathtub with the toilet right next
to him. Humbert is revealing what really ought to be
flushed away.

It is the eventual revelation of the diary which cause
Charlotte's accidental death and creates the perfect opportunity for Humbert to be with Lolita. In the aftermath of the accident Humbert languishes in the bathtub, nonchalantly
receiving visitors who wish to pay their respects. Here Humbert is exercising a newfound power, he is naked; his visitors are clothed, he is
composed while they struggle to hold back their emotions. Also he accepts an
offer of financial assistance from the driver of the vehicle that killed his
wife. By accepting this 'reward' Humbert possesses the
resources to pursue his relationship with Lolita in an unfettered way,far from the prying eyes of his wife's friends and neighbours. But his relationship with his 'nymphette' is
dishonest from the start, because he loses the very thing he wishes most to
possess through his false sense of propriety.

The bathroom motif continues in Kubrick's next film, Dr Strangelove. In an early scene the Hawkish
General Turgidson is in the bathroom as his bikini
clad-secretary, Miss Scott, takes a call from military command. This scene
finds the general in his most vulnerable moment called to exercise his
power. In the closest he ever came
to a direct statement about this, Kubrick told Joseph Gemelis, 'Confront a man in his office with a nuclear
alarm, and you have a documentary. If the news reaches him in his living room, you have a drama. If it catches him in the lavatory, the
result is a comedy' (Gemelis 1970, 309).

Later in the film, as General Jack D. Ripper, who has
set the entire catastrophe in motion, sits in the office of his base which is
under attack by U.S. forces. In the scenes with colonel Mandrake he confronts
his impending capture and interrogation and decides to commit suicide rather
than submit to their authority. Ripper steps into the bathroom, puts a towel around his neck, stares
into the mirror, and closes the door. A gunshot is heard a moment later. Ripper gives up his life, but seeks to guarantee his planned outcome
through his death in the bathroom.

Bathrooms feature in Kubrick's next film 2001: A
Space Odyssey in a brief comic scene where the space bureaucrat, Dr. Floyd,
studies the intricate and intimidating instructions posted on a 'zero-gravity
toilet' door. This scene again
suggest that, no matter how high a person's stature, everyone has to perform
this basic animal requirement.

At the end of 2001, astronaut Dave Bowman finds
himself in a spectral room which he has reached by traveling through many
dimensions and wrinkles of the cosmos. His first awareness of the state his journey has left him in occurs when
he steps into the suite's luxurious, if coldly empty bathroom. He regards his reflection in a mirror
there, wide-eyed to see that he has aged considerably. Just as he's taking this in, he hears a
noise, and peers out the door at a seated figure, dining at a table across the
adjacent room. Moments later, it is
revealed that this second person is yet another Bowman, older still, who seems
to sense he's being watched. He
gets up from the table and walks to the bathroom, but his younger self is no
longer there. Knowledge is again
gained, and withheld, in a bathroom. It should be noted that this scene occurs moments before the hopeful
finale, which depicts the rebirth of this man, and very possibly that of all
humanity, in a mystical and poignant tableaux.

In Kubrick's next film, A Clockwork Orange we see the main character, Alex, late in
the story, accidentally reveal his identity to the very last person he'd want
it known to. A man he victimized
earlier in the film has rescued him from perishing in the elements, and has
given Alex refuge in his home - the very home in which Alex had horribly
assaulted the man and his wife, an assault which led to her eventual
death. Now Alex is upstairs,
soaking away his bruises and chill in a hot bath, his host just downstairs. Alex gradually relaxes, and begins to
croon his signature tune, "Singin' in the
Rain," which he performed while assaulting this man and his wife. Alex is oblivious to the import of this
song in this house, but Mr.Alexander, downstairs, practically has a seizure as he
hears the song, registering when he's heard it before. While Alex chortles away in the bath,
giving away his identity, his former victim now becomes Alex's captor, and
hatches a scheme of revenge as sadistic as anything Alex has done in the
past. The truth again came out in a
bathroom. Power shifted, changing
the rest of the story to come.

In 1975's Barry Lyndon , the bathroom makes
one subtle appearance. Barry has
betrayed his wife repeatedly, and has been observed in an infidelity just a
scene or two ago. Subsequently, we
watch as Barry enters his wife's private chambers, where she is having a soak
in the bathtub. Barry walks over to
her with a look of great contrition, kneels by the tub, and apologizes to her,
with seemingly full sincerity. She
sadly listens, and accepts a tender kiss from him. But however sincere his apology at this
moment, and his humbling of himself before her, he soon inevitably reverts to
his loutish ways. The one true
expression of his love for his wife in the entire movie, though, takes place in
that special room of rooms.

Whatever subtlety
prevailed in the use of bathrooms up until Barry Lyndon is now abandoned
with a vengeance in the last three films of Kubrick's career. By now, even he must have known that the
pattern was clear to his audience, and he begins to underline it boldly.

1980's The Shining, along with exploring several other
heavily freighted symbols (mirrors, doubles, eyes, doors, certain colors), runs
amok in bathrooms. If ever it
was unclear that this room is the crucible of change, power, and truth for
Kubrick, The Shining puts
the spotlight on it as never before. Its first appearance comes early : Danny Torrance, the young boy gifted
with "the shining," or ESP, is standing before the bathroom sink at home,
staring at himself in the mirror (like Gen. Ripper and Dave Bowman before
him). A vision comes to him of the
danger in the Overlook Hotel, where he and his parents are about to spend an
isolated winter as caretakers. Danny sees a river (torrents?) of blood pouring forth from an elevator
we later come to know is in the hotel. This flash of insight is so powerful that he passes out, necessitating a
doctor's house-call.

Later in the
prologue, while getting a tour of the hotel from its manager, Jack and Wendy,
Danny's parents, end up in the shabby caretaker's quarters where they will
live. Their walk-through of the
apartment, dismaying as it is, ends with them standing in the bathroom, forcing
a smile, and Jack declaring the rooms "homey." Faced with the truth of their lot, the
couple lie to themselves in the room associated with revelation,
"overlooking" what is plain to see.

The bathroom gets
deadly serious in its next appearance, when Jack , later in the snowbound
winter, investigates Danny's report of a "crazy woman" in one of the
hotel rooms, who tried to strangle the boy. The hotel is stirring to life, and it
reaches out to Jack in Room 237's bathroom, where his ghostly encounter takes
the form of a beautiful naked woman, who rises up out of the tub, seductive in
a decidely aloof way. But she's not what she seems, and, as
Jack kisses her, his glance into the mirror behind her shows him that she has
become the decomposing corpse of an old woman. She laughs long and loud at her practical
joke, following Jack as he backs away from her in terror. First he was seduced and tricked in the
bathroom, then shown the true face of the hotel, laughing at him. And, to cap it all, Jack lies to Wendy
afterwards, telling her he found no one in Room 237! The truth of what Jack saw
convinced him to lie, to again "overlook" the evidence, because of
his overwhelming desire to remain in the hotel at all cost.

Another crucial scene,
perhaps the ultimate sequence of the movie, brings us into the bathroom yet
again. This time, Jack
encounters a butler, Grady, who may or may not be the former caretaker, who
killed his family and himself some years before. He spills a drink on Jack in the grand
ballroom, and guides him into the blood-red men's room to clean him up. In the course of their increasingly
unnerving conversation, Grady transforms from an obsequious valet into the very
voice of the hotel. He fills Jack in on the important fact that both of them
have "always been here," that they have predetermined roles to play
in the service of the hotel's wishes, and inadvertently reveals that they each
comprehend only what the hotel wants them to. Hearing these "orders from The
House," Jack gradually shifts from cocky and certain to childishly receptive,
as Grady instructs him to kill his family, or "correct" them, as he
so delicately, horribly puts it. By
the time their bathroom discussion is over, we know more than we ever wanted to
about Grady, the hotel, Jack's total surrender to its sway, and the likely
outcome of the story, if Jack's new-found assignment is not prevented. The dynamics of this scene are simply
exquisite, as the masks come off, true character emerges, and the hotel's core
desires are revealed. (And notice,
just for the nuanced pleasure of it, how not only do Grady and Jack exchange
their original positions of power here, but their bodies actually mirror this
shift. Grady starts off looking
distinctly shorter than Jack, who's all macho posturing to Grady's servile flutterings. But
by the end of the scene, as Grady's true intentions emerge, he appears, through
brilliant camera work and angles of lighting, to eventually tower over a
now-speechless Jack). Repeated
viewings only reveal more details, and it's stunning to note how many things
are happening at once in that red, red bathroom.

And there's still one
more crucial bathroom scene to come, taking things completely over the
top. This final example occurs when
Jack comes after his family with an axe, bent on fulfilling the hotel's
wishes. Wendy dashes into the
bathroom in the caretaker's apartment with Danny, as Jack chops his way through
the outer door to their rooms. She
helps Danny escape through the bathroom's tiny window, and he slides safely
down a mountainous snow drift, like an image from a fairy tale. But she can't fit through the window
herself, and, picking up a large kitchen knife, she despairingly braces for
Jack's onslaught. He is now an
utter maniac, a husband and father no longer. He is all the animals in his own head
now, all the hotel's animals, too, grabbing after the power over life and
death. He begins to smash the
bathroom door with his axe, clearly enjoying his work, confident he'll kill
Wendy momentarily. But, there in
the bathroom, cornered, she has a life-saving flash of inspiration, and cuts
Jack's hand badly as he reaches through the broken door panels to unlock the
door. He is thwarted, realizing she
will cut him every time he tries to enter the room. And just at that moment, before he resumes
his attack, a noise in the distance distracts him, the arrival of Halloran,
Danny's would-be rescuer, and he withdraws to investigate. On the verge of wielding ultimate power,
Jack falters, and Wendy discovers strength in herself she never needed to call
on before. It all just happened to have taken place in a bathroom...

And how can those scenes possibly be topped, either as
brilliant drama, or in their use as symbolism?

Kubrick's solution
comes in the previously mentioned FULL METAL JACKET, in which the lowly (and aptly named)
Private Pyle usurps the authority of his bullying sergeant in the most decisive
way - by shooting him dead. In the
bathroom. As Gen. Ripper achieved
the ultimate victory in DR. STRANGELOVE (or so he thought), by committing
suicide and keeping his vital secrets safe, so Pvt. Pyle relieves himself of
both Sgt. Hartman, his hated tormentor, and the madness his boot camp life has
plunged him into. He can see no
other way out, feels powerless, and still he finally achieves a measure of
power through the satisfaction of killing Hartman, before taking his own
life. In Pyle's limited
perspective, perhaps, he has staged a coup by killing his sergeant. No matter that there are scores of
candidates ready to step into Hartman's shoes; Pyle has done away with his tormentor (the animal in his head). And Hartman
dies asserting his earlier authority, staring Pyle down, still ridiculing him,
and ordering him to surrender his weapon. Hartman is confident he can tame the animals in his "head" and
defuse the situation. And, should
he fail, he's quite willing to sacrifice his own life trying, believing that
command and control must be maintained at all cost. He gives up his life to an underling for
the sake of preserving the greater power, his "beloved Corps." To his way of thinking, he has won a
more important victory than saving his own hide - he's thrown himself on the
proverbial grenade to save the platoon. And Pyle, having destroyed the personification of all his own misery, is
ready to pull the trigger on himself. He not only knocks authority off its pedestal, but chooses his own form
of justice for himself, denying his enemies any further control over his life
by ending it immediately.

This scene, seemingly
a simple, if shocking, denouement to a tension which has built for 45
excruciating minutes, is actually quite complex. The inner-workings, as the wheels turn
in the minds of these two men, pass over their faces throughout the scene,
shifting and shading their dance of death. Hartman, when he realizes he's going to have to put his life on the line
to stop Pyle, smiles to himself in a strangely elated way, before he speaks his
final sentences. He seems to be
pleased, recognizing that Fate is allowing him a great moment in which to
distinguish himself as a valorous Marine. And Pyle, too, smiles, at the same moment of realization - he has
engaged his enemy head-on, and they are both now consciously stepping forward
to play out their ultimate roles. It's a smile of recognition which passes between them, rank against
rank, life against life, authority versus individual will. One man will only give up his power by
dying, and the other can only gain it through killing. Their illusions are stronger than even
their wills to live, as has been played out somewhere in every one of Kubrick's
films. But never more bluntly than
in this case.

Then, finally, after a
12-year wait, EYES WIDE SHUT came along. One early rumor had it that : "The
shooting of a crucial scene in a bathroom has been going on for 3 weeks." Well, surprise! When at last the happy opening day
rolled around, it was overshadowed with sadness at the death of Kubrick the man.
But he left us in top form.

Therefore, it didn't
take long for this film to get right into the next bathroom! In fact, within the opening sequence, as
Bill and Alice Harford are getting ready to go out to a formal Christmas party,
we visit them momentarily in the bathroom. Characteristically, even this tiny scene is vitally important, as it
reveals one central truth about their marriage, which is that Bill takes his
wife for granted. We see this as
she's sitting on the toilet (no mincing around it this time), and he's looking
at himself in the mirror. She asks
how she looks, how's her hair, and, without even glancing at her, he says
"Perfect." She duly
notes, "You're not even looking at it." The setup for the entire film has just
taken place.

Then, only 8 minutes into
the picture, the first crucible arrives. Bill, a doctor, has been summoned by the host of the party, Victor
Ziegler, to an urgent situation taking place in - the bathroom. Ziegler (only now zipping up his pants -
what has he been doing in the minutes between sending for Bill, and
Bill's arrival?!) is waiting for him, in the company of a comatose woman
sprawled naked in a blood-red easy chair. She has overdosed. It
emerges that Ziegler could care less about her condition; he simply wants this
potentially embarrassing situation dealt with. Bill manages to wake her, examine her
briefly, and give her a pompous warning about the dangers of her drug habit. Ziegler can barely contain his
impatience to get her out of there so he can return to his party. But first, he realizes he's in a
compromising position, and must enlist Bill's silence about what's
happened. He tells Bill he hopes
that "this is just between us," and Bill blithely says, "Of
course." No scruples required,
not in the bathroom.

But, like the ripples
expanding across water from a dropped stone, the implications of this scene
course throughout the rest of the story. We see enough about Ziegler here to assess his personal evil, and the
party's setting reveals his fabulous wealth and power. He makes his first offer of a
Mephistophelean bargain to Bill here, as he will again, late in the film. Bill, for his part, is a callow social
climber, ambitious enough to cope with the situation without breaking his
stride. As he told Alice earlier in
the party sequence, "This is what you get for making house-calls." Having now made the ultimate house-call,
Bill's appetite for privilege has been whetted, and he begins to act out his belief
that he's somehow privy to the inner sanctum to a greater degree than ever
before. Believing and acting on
this, his behavior results in an abrupt reality check from Ziegler later on,
when his subsequent party-crashing at a much riskier party gets him put firmly
back into his assigned social rank. Bill comes to understand that keeping Ziegler's secret in no way
entitles him to move above his station - that the privilege of making
house-calls is in itself the reward he's expected to content himself with.

The alpha male will
take him into his confidence only when he needs to, and Bill will definitely be
invited to next year's Christmas party, but any further assumption he makes
will get him slapped down post-haste. Yet the scene in the bathroom has unleashed Bill's yearnings to move in
circles beyond his reach. This is
because Bill, like so many men in Kubrick's work, is dangerously oblivious to
how those coveted circles really work, and what the true price of admission is. And he's equally oblivious of his own
deepest motives, using his bland behavior to hide from even himself the urgency
of his desires, and his willingness to jeopardize all he holds dear just to
climb another rung in the social ladder. (Like Jack in the Overlook Hotel, easily ignoring the horror of what
he's being urged to do to his family, because he's so hungrily eyeing the
desired prize). Bill is quite ripe
for corruption. It's come slowly to
him, through money, his success, his charisma, and he's already poised to take
the next step forward (or downward), as shown by his total lack of outrage over
what he finds in Ziegler's bathroom. And Ziegler knew just who to call for help, among his many minions. Bill thinks he's endeared himself to
Ziegler, but to Ziegler he's just another servant. And, all the while, the real center of
his life, his family, is slipping away from him at the same pace with which he
seeks adventure and recognition away from it. Because he's so out of touch with his
own inner drives, he's incapable of communicating his confusion to the one
honest person in his whole sorry existence - his wife Alice.

Just as Jack Torrance,
the permanent and lowly caretaker, is flattered into a sense of his own
importance by the manipulations of Grady in the Overlook's men's room, so Bill
Harford is seduced by the belief that he's been taken into Ziegler's
confidence, and is able to ignore the true sliminess of the setting
involved. While Bill feels closer
to the center of power through the bargain made in Ziegler's upholstered
bathroom, and greedily anticipates new and guilt-free liberties, he's merely
played the mark to a craftier and vastly more experienced con man.

It would appear that,
with each successive bathroom episode, Kubrick etched the importance of that
room with greater clarity and directness. Here is the place where all ambition, pretension, and vanity are cast
into stark relief against the reality of the physical bodies we inhabit, grow
old in, die in. No matter how
high-flown humanity's grand designs are, people are ultimately seduced and
fooled by them. These highly
un-glamorous plumbing facilities are the last chance available to remind us of
natural laws, actual humanity,
perhaps the integrity of the animals we humans still simply are, and often
resent being. Once we cross into
the realm of living in our heads, we've cut ourselves off from the wisdom and
knowledge our bodies ground us in. If we only live in our heads, and begin to lose the fear of the
consequences our bodies may experience due to our minds running riot, we're
certain to be smacked down by the brick wall of physical reality. And there's hardly a more
incontrovertible proof of human existence than the necessary activities
attended to in the bathroom. Absolutely no pretense is possible sitting on a toilet. We can conquer the animals in our heads
only so long as we remember exactly what we are - animals in the
"head."

References

Gelmis, J. (1970) The Film Director as Superstar. New York:Doubleday.

Goffman, E. (1963) Behavior in Public Places: Notes
on the social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.